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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247355">Glitterball</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_k/pseuds/m_k'>m_k</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Starship Churchill [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, F/F, F/M, Gen, Inferno (La Divina Commedia | The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri), Messiah, Vulcan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:27:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,844</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_k/pseuds/m_k</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Starship Churchill [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037238</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Uno</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I opened my eyes. It had already grown dark, and a blue twilight landscape raced past the windows, too quick to study. Curiously, there were no stars in the sky.</p><p>The passenger car smelled rancid and mechanical. Voices jabbered all around me. I observed people of all sorts, some sleeping, some animated, some wretched. I was glad to have a seat to myself.</p><p>Across the aisle, a woman stared at me, unapologetically. She was dark skinned, with tight cornrow braids falling upon her shoulders from beneath a wide-brimmed hat.</p><p>She asked, “Where are you headed?”</p><p>“Headed?”</p><p>I twisted in my seat, as if to find something, but what? A handbag? A ticket? I did not even know. Nor did I see anything that belonged to me.</p><p>“I think you’re going to Alpha Low,” she said. She smiled, revealing a row of perfect teeth. “And I think you must have been a bad girl, like me,” she added.</p><p>I reflexively gripped the cracked, stiff seat cushion beneath me.</p><p>“I don’t feel well,” I said, closing my eyes tightly, trying to push back a roiling confusion growing within me like a dysplasia.</p><p>My fellow passenger then said, “Don’t try to get off at the wrong stop. You’re already headed for the lowest level. Anyway, I wouldn’t advise it.”</p><p>“Why not?” I asked, shivering.</p><p>“Because you’ll lose what’s left of your soul,” she said. “You were ordained to come here, to abide here.”</p><p>The train shifted and turned on its tracks. I tried to focus on the landscape outside the window, but it was ill-defined and seemed to stretch into nothingness. There were no lights, no cities, just a murky void.</p><p>I asked uncertainly, “Do my people have a soul?”</p><p>“Who are your people?” the woman asked.</p><p>“I—I’m a…,” I reached for some word or idea, but could not connect, could not grasp it. Again I tried, “I’m from the planet…the planet…”</p><p>I broke into a cold sweat, my mouth still open.</p><p>The woman laughed a bit cruelly. She was lanky, with a muscular neck well defined jaw.</p><p>“We’re all the same here,” she explained. She continued to look at me probingly and I shrank in my seat, pressed close to the window.</p><p>Closing my eyes, I pretended to sleep while searching within myself for some shred of explanation as to how I had arrived here. But it seemed I had lost everything, including my identity and name.</p><p>I looked at the reflection of my own face in the window. Large eyes, short orange hair, no makeup. The tips of my ears were pointed, while none around me shared this trait. Yet it did not seem unusual.</p><p>What was I expecting to see instead? I traced my face with my hands, then watched the reflection of the woman who had spoken to me earlier. Her image hovered and jittered above the undefined dark landscape beyond the glass. Some of the other passengers appeared ragged and worn, as though refugees. But this woman, in contrast, seemed substantial and powerful.</p><p>The train stopped several times. I would hear the shuffling of weary feet as people departed and the train emptied.</p><p>One time I tried to stand, as though to leave, but the woman in black shook her head and indicated I should sit back down. I could not tell whether she was a friend or not, or even whether that had any meaning here. </p><p>But I continued to watch her in the reflection of the glass. Eventually she slept, seemingly unconcerned by our mysterious destiny. I could not remember boarding the train or indeed anything from before. Just existing suddenly in a sickened and agitated state, sitting alone on this decrepit bench.</p><p>I looked around the darkened cabin and realized that we two, me and the woman across the aisle, were the last passengers in the car. Suddenly terrified, I bolted from my seat and squeezed in next to the other woman. She opened her eyes and gazed at me.</p><p>I shuddered. Was this a supernatural world? My companion seemed comfortable enough with everything that was happening. She smelled odd, like unwashed clothes that had been stored away for a long time.</p><p>“What did I do,” I asked, “to wind up here?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” the woman replied, facing forward.</p><p>“What did you do?”</p><p>“I…observe…a horror that cannot be forgiven, every day,” she answered. “But, even considering that, I think I’ve been sent here to protect you. Perhaps this is a last chance…to redeem myself. A way to break this cycle.”</p><p>The train began to slow, its brakes screeching angrily as we lurched forward in our seat.</p><p>“We are here,” she said.</p><p>I grabbed her strong hand in mine and asked, “What is my name?”</p><p>She looked at me coldly.</p><p>“If you do not remember, then how can I?” she asked matter of factly.</p><p>“Then what is your name?” I asked.</p><p>“Sylene,” said the woman. “My name is Sylene.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Due</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We stepped off the train and onto a worn, cracked platform. Beyond the platform was an opaque darkness. Sylene looked around, her face lit in cold blue hues by the single bright bulb high above us, its transformer buzzing loudly. A slight breeze was blowing, but the air smelled stale.</p><p>The train came to life again and labored to pull away in the direction from which it had come.</p><p>“Where does it go now?” I asked.</p><p>“Back through the realms.”</p><p>“Can we get back on?” I asked.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Sylene settled herself on the dusty ground. She then looked me over from head to toe. I was wearing a one piece black uniform, with gold shoulder accents. A badge shaped like an arrow head rested above my left breast.</p><p>“Are you cold?” Sylene asked.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“What is that symbol on your chest?”</p><p>I tried to examine myself under the harsh artificial light.</p><p>“Maybe a bird?”</p><p>“Maybe a bird,” repeated Sylene, as though it were the most ridiculous thing in the world.</p><p>“What are we doing now?” I asked.</p><p>“It’s too dark to walk. We need to be able to see what we are up against. There is no daylight here, but it will brighten a bit.”</p><p>“No daylight?” I asked.</p><p>I glanced around at the uncomfortably dark void extending in every direction. The stillness was unnatural.</p><p>“Sylene, what is this place?”</p><p>“Where the wicked are sent,” she replied.</p><p>“But is it a planet? Is it underground?”</p><p>With her voice low and her eyes vigilant, Sylene explained, “It is the last place you want to be, and the first place you want to leave.”</p><p>“Sylene…,” I began, shaking my head.</p><p>She shushed me.</p><p>Feeling defeated and fatigued, I settled next to her and closed my eyes.</p><p>“If you were tired you should have slept on the train. There is no sleeping here.”</p><p>“I’m just resting my eyes,” I replied.</p><p>Sylene’s jacket was heavy and coarse. I laid my head on her shoulder and tried to escape from consciousness if only for a while.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>There seemed to be no way to measure time, not even mentally. And Sylene was right in that whatever mechanism was involved in sleep and unconsciousness simply did not work here. My mind never shut off, but rather just seemed to idle in a mire of unformed thoughts which kept repeating aimlessly. Eventually, the sky lightened: a haze of twilight so blue it was almost ultraviolet. Searching the horizon, I saw only a bleak line, curving upwards as though we rested in a valley. There were no trees, no birds, no insects, no flowers.</p><p>“There’s nothing here,” I said.</p><p>Sylene helped me to my feet and pointed behind me. There I saw some wretched outlines of buildings lining a single dirt road. No people, no animals, no vehicles; just a rugged emptiness.</p><p>“What is our goal here?” I asked.</p><p>She laughed, and replied, “Avoid trouble.”</p><p>The street, if it could be called such, was still as death. The buildings lining it appeared to be made of blocks of sod. As we walked along, Sylene would occasionally stop and listen, then motion me forward again.</p><p>“Sylene….”</p><p>She stopped and looked at me expectantly.</p><p>But I did not know what to say. I felt powerless and cast off, but not as much as I might have felt if I were alone. And I felt uncertain, but not as uncertain as I would be without Sylene. My faculties had become ineffective and feeble, while my logic had become shorn of its former proud incisiveness.</p><p>“You’re scared,” she remarked. “That is the correct reaction.”</p><p>The largest building had no windows, only gaps lining the top, like vents. The heavy, primitive door was swung open, flush with the outer wall.</p><p>Sylene hesitated and explained, “Sometimes people just don’t listen and you have to convince them the hard way. The last time I walked through that door, within ten seconds I had to break a guy’s arm.”</p><p>“I was afraid you were going to say you had to kill someone,” I said.</p><p>Sylene stopped again and grabbed me by the shoulders.</p><p>“I know you’re new here,” she stated, “but you need to listen carefully. This place is not like other places. Someone breaks your arm, it stays broken. Someone slices you open, it doesn’t heal. You don’t want to be cut up here.”</p><p>Her fingers dug into me angrily.</p><p>Then she released me and marched inside. I wiped the dust out of my eyes and followed her through the doorway.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>“Where is everyone?” asked Sylene.</p><p>A voice travelled from the far end of the room, although I could not see anything in the darkness.</p><p>“Gone,” the elderly voice replied. “Left to fight the Betas.”</p><p>“What about you?” asked Sylene.</p><p>“Legs don’t work.”</p><p>I thought I could see benches lined against the walls, but no tables, no lights.</p><p>Sylene turned to leave and brushed past me. I followed. She entered the nearby buildings each in turn and quickly examined them. They were empty. She did find one tattered and worn blanket, which she handed to me and told me to keep.</p><p>“I thought there would be people here,” she said. “Safety in numbers.”</p><p>“Who are the Betas?”</p><p>Sylene stood regarding the horizon beyond the main road. “The Betas live in the next ring,” she explained. “They have more material possessions there. Alpha Low is a kind of holding cell for people like us. But there is no way to get to the Beta ring from here, so I don’t understand where the people have gone.”</p><p>The light was once again fading into blackness.</p><p>“It can’t be getting dark again!” I protested.</p><p>“When the light returns, we’ll leave.”</p><p>Sylene drew me inside one of the small huts and told me to rest a while. I stumbled and fell onto several objects which began to stir beneath me. Sylene pulled me up and dragged me out of the hut.</p><p>“What was that in there?” I asked, shaken.</p><p>“Never mind,” she said.</p><p>We found another hut and settled together down in the corner. I felt Sylene shift. She surprised me by placing my two hands against her face.</p><p>“What do I look like?” she asked. “It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten.”</p><p>“Chocolate skin, strong face, straight nose, nice teeth,” I said. “Sylene, I saw no plants, and little water. What do people eat here? What do they drink?”</p><p>“You won’t eat here, and you won’t drink. You won’t sleep and you won’t rest. Those are privileges in this world that you must earn. You can’t even crap or piss. Those are privileges. Do you understand me?”</p><p>I tried to imagine how this could be. Part of me seemed to know about living things, about how they were put together, and the processes that made them function. Sylene’s description of this world did not agree with whatever shadow knowledge I seemed to retain inside me.    </p><p>I asked, “Is this the afterlife?”</p><p>“We’re here, now,” she replied. “That’s all I can tell you. All of us have been here since the beginning, in this place, whatever this place is. But you…are new. You didn’t come from here. Like the others, I am trapped here, in this world, but I am not like the others. And you…are not like me. I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sticking with you, in case you can show us a way out. I think you can do that.”</p><p>I sighed and said, “That would be nice…if we can leave together.”</p><p>After a while, Sylene questioned me. “What do you remember from when you first arrived here?”</p><p>“I was on the train,” I said. “And you were there, sitting across from me. That’s my first memory. But, maybe, I also remember dreaming that I was falling, surrounded by shards.”</p><p>“Shards?”</p><p>“Reflections.” I regarded the image and the sensation in my mind’s eye, but was not sure how to parse it exactly.</p><p>“Hmm,” Sylene voiced.</p><p>“Sylene,” I asked, “what is your first memory?”</p><p>“Our experience here goes back thousands of years, through various cycles of time, during which this world was recreated by the gods. Unlike the others, I remember every minute, every second. Thousands of years of agony. ”</p><p>I clutched Sylene close in the darkness, feeling her breath on my face. Was she telling the truth? What would be left of me after thousands of years in this forsaken place?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Tre</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Striding into a motionless and silent landscape, Sylene and I left town together. The dirt road ended, changing into a gently sweeping surface of sand and gravel. Because of unsure footing, it was impossible to move quickly.</p><p>“It’s not so bad in this place!” I said cheerfully.</p><p>Sylene grimmaced.</p><p>“No bugs,” I explained. “No snakes. No inclement weather. No garbage.”</p><p>She continued to ignore me.</p><p>I asked, “Where are we going?”</p><p>“Over the horizon is another village like the one we left behind. We may be able to pick up some fellow travelers there. Safety in numbers.”</p><p>“And from there?”</p><p>Sylene sighed heavily and stopped, looking at the ground.</p><p>“Why won’t you tell me?” I asked.</p><p>“Fine, I will.”</p><p>Sylene increased the stretch of her stride. I struggled to keep up.</p><p>She began to speak like a professor: “The Alpha realm is like a toroid. Like a donut. There’s a part that interfaces with the other realms, but it’s in the middle of the ocean. We are in the part that’s farthest from the ocean…on the opposite side. We have to walk halfway around the world—around the donut—to get there.”</p><p>“How far is that?” I asked.</p><p>“Well, measurements, like everything else, are a bit weird here. But I can give you an idea. There are about fifty million settlements in Alpha, which is almost completely homogenous in its landscape. Meaning everything looks like this.”</p><p>“I know what ‘homogenous’ means,” I said.</p><p>“We will pass through about one hundred and forty thousand settlements on our way to the ocean.”</p><p> I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. One hundred and forty thousand deserts to cross, in the twilight? Is that what you’re saying?”</p><p>Sylene looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Unless you know a quicker way….”</p><p>I did not want to even calculate how long that would take…not that time had any meaning here anyway.</p><p>I asked, “What about the train tracks? We can build a vehicle that rolls on the tracks. We can make it go fast.”</p><p>“Build it out of what? Rocks?” asked Sylene. “Besides, anyone who messes with the tracks is set back. I told you, you can’t afford to be set back. You’re at the lowest rung already.”</p><p>“So what would happen to me?” I asked.</p><p>“You don’t want to know.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” I rejoined, irritated.</p><p>After what seemed like several hours it grew dark again. I stumbled and fell onto the rocks that littered the land. Thankfully, they were slightly weathered and rounded, despite there being no weather.</p><p>“Be careful,” Sylene warned. “You crack your head open, it won’t heal.”</p><p>I settled down, wrapped myself tightly in my worn blanket and gazed up at the starless sky, which was simply a stretch of ultraviolet tinged black.</p><p>“If this is a toroid, shouldn’t we see lights in the sky? Like the light at the train platform?” I asked.</p><p>“Too few,” said Sylene. “And too far away.”</p><p>“And you said that my head wouldn’t heal if I split it open accidentally. So you know about ‘healing.’ I mean, if this was a world where nothing ever healed, you wouldn’t even understand the concept.”</p><p>“People heal,” countered Sylene, “in the upper realms. Assuming they are ever promoted to those realms.”</p><p>Time passed, and Sylene sat in silence with her back to mine.</p><p>“If people are promoted to the higher realms, won’t I be promoted to the Beta realm naturally? I mean, before I could ever get there by foot, marching across endless deserts?”</p><p>Sylene replied, “I’m counting on something happening first.”</p><p>“Like what?”</p><p>Sylene sighed again, then laid out her heavy coat on the ground and stretched out beside me. “Just got a feeling.” </p><p>  </p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Despite being outdoors, the lack of stars, of weather, and of sound created a kind of negative space around us. We seemed to be trapped in a charmless and comfortless state. Sometimes I had to touch my own face, just to make sure I existed and was warm to the touch. I put my hand to my throat and felt for a pulse. Was anything in this place actually alive?</p><p>Lying there, feeling lost, I demanded that Sylene explain how such a place could exist.</p><p>“Many here have it much worse than you do,” she replied.</p><p>“Yes, of course I know that. There’s always <i>someone</i> who has it worse than you do. I mean, that’s a given. But that’s not what I’m talking about. This place can’t exist. It can’t.”</p><p>“Yet it does, and you’re here.”</p><p>“Yes, but—”</p><p>“Why don’t you shut up for just a bit?” suggested Sylene.</p><p>More time passed. I closed by eyes and tried hard to sweep away whatever bad dream I was having, whatever bad trip I was on. I wanted to return, but to what? I tried to imagine somewhere else. My body could feel at least the potential for some other state of existence, even if I could not visualize it or name it.</p><p>Something about my present world was false.</p><p>“Hey!” Sylene called. She was standing and staring into the distance, lit by an odd light, a shimmering. I turned to see a disc of silvery stars, like a well-defined swirling galaxy, rotating above us. Or perhaps more like a ball, but was it concave or convex? It hovered a moment, hanging in the distant sky, then faded completely.</p><p>Sylene snapped her fingers, pointed at me, and ordered, “Bring it back.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“You must have been doing something!” she said.</p><p>“I was trying to wake myself up from this nightmare. I was imagining putting all of this behind me, existing somewhere else.”</p><p>“Didn’t you see it?” asked Sylene. “That thing is what we call the Glitterball. It’s a doorway that is used to travel between the rings. And it’s how we get to Beta.” She grabbed me by the shoulders. “Bring…it…back!”</p><p>Without luck, I attempted to wish the magical doorway into existence, willing it to appear. Time passed and the sky began to lighten. Disheartened by my failure, Sylene suggested we travel while I contemplated what I had done to open the Glitterball in the first place.</p><p>Sylene, now distracted, was having trouble discerning in which direction we should be heading.</p><p>“Should have followed the tracks,” she chided herself.</p><p>“Why didn’t we?”</p><p>“Because the tracks hit up every settlement. Every single one.”</p><p>Sylene frowned, looked about helplessly, then pointed and directed, “This way.”</p><p>The terrain became uneven, and Sylene stopped and peered about uneasily as though second guessing herself.</p><p>“Was I really the reason why the Glitterball appeared?” I asked.</p><p>“What else could it have possibly been?” she answered.</p><p>I stumbled over something and paused to examine it.</p><p>“Fingers,” I said, and started to reach out toward what appeared to be part of a hand emerging from the ground. Sylene grabbed my hand and sternly signaled that I should leave it alone. Staring in fascination, I began to walk away, but stumbled over another half-buried item—the top of a hairless head. A pair of eyes, open but half obscured by sand and dust, stared at me.</p><p>“Body!” I cried, trying to approach Sylene. Again I stumbled over another part of someone’s anatomy—a knee or elbow poking out of the earth. All three body parts were too separated to belong to one corpse, or at least a corpse that was still in one piece.</p><p>I began to see that all around us were half-buried bodies covered in dust and sand.</p><p>“Bodies!” I corrected myself.</p><p>“Those are people,” said Sylene evenly. “This is a garden of very bad people.”</p><p>She clasped my hand and carefully pulled me along as I tried not to step onto anything half-living and half-dead. We climbed together over a rocky ridge in an attempt to leave the horrific stretch.</p><p>“Ah crap,” said Sylene.</p><p>Before us were more living bodies, frozen in place and half buried, like statues, not breathing, but uncannily attentive. A field of discarded, jumbled toy soldiers.</p><p>I objected, desperate to go the other way.</p><p>Sylene regarded me clinically, then shoved me down the slope and into the field of undead figures.</p><p>I tumbled, hit the ground twice, then roughly came to a stop against flesh and bones. I opened my eyes to find a face twisted in anger fixed just before me. Again I tried to flee, flailing among the arms and hands that I thought were gripping me.</p><p>I called to Sylene for help.</p><p>Then I saw that, behind her, the Glitterball had returned, this time expanding wildly until it filled half the sky, like a swirling pool of fireflies. As Sylene turned around, the shimmering spherical doorway seemed to explode and a wall of water engulfed my companion. The immense swell rushed past me high above, then, pulled by gravity, fell and swept me along. I had the sensation of being transported under water in the darkness, and then being uplifted and ejected into the air. For a second I saw the glowing portal, a stream of water still rushing out of it. Then a towering wave of water, perhaps rebounding from the other side of the valley, lifted me and swept me toward and through the Glitterball.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Quattro</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The sky was brighter on the other side. Unable to breathe, I flailed and tried to swim. Around me was an endless stretch of water. The tall wave deposited me upon a shore, a beach. I began to cough up liquid as I tried to breathe. My muscles, tortured and worthless, refused to function. I lay there for some time.</p><p><i>I should have died</i>, I thought. <i>I should have drowned.</i></p><p>Peering around, it seemed I was on an island, with a volcanic mountain that was devoid of vegetation rising behind me. Still water met the beach in front of me. Thirst caused me to approach the water, but, scooping it up in my hands, I realized it smelled spoiled and like chemicals. Not wanting to spend eternity with a wretched stomach ache, I returned the handful of water to the ocean. </p><p>Despite the increased light, which was warmer and drier, there was no sun. I thought I could see the toroidal walls containing this world rise up from the horizon, but was not certain. The sand around me was gray and volcanic and abrasive—not even proper sand.</p><p>Then I noticed my clothes were dry. How long was I sitting there, trying to recover the strength to move? Time seemed either to rush or to stretch, with the only consistency being a total lack thereof.</p><p>There was no trace of Sylene.</p><p>I shouted her name as I walked the beach, then discovered what looked like a path lined with rocks receding in the direction of the tall volcano. The whole island was igneous, foamy and grey, and very hard on my hands as I navigated the steep trail that led up the mountain. I found a large caldera on one side. Against one wall was a lean-to, primitive in construction, made from cloth and sticks.</p><p>Cautiously, I approached and said, “Hello?”</p><p>“I knew this would happen!” the voice of an older male exclaimed from behind the lean-to.</p><p>“The Glitterball dumped me on your island,” I explained.</p><p>“I warned the others, but they wouldn’t listen!” the voice complained.</p><p>“Hello?” I prompted again.</p><p>“You must think that you’re pretty special, don’t you?” replied the disembodied voice in an unfriendly tone.</p><p>“Can—can you come out so I can see you?” I prompted.</p><p>A thin, ragged man ventured forth, balding and gray, unsteady on his feet. His clothing was tattered and threadbare.</p><p>I remembered what Sylene had said about the occupants of this universe: <i>Our experience here goes back thousands of years. </i>Surely the clothes these people arrived with would have worn out within a few years? But perhaps the clothes here were like the bodies of the people, sliding into dereliction, then existing in a kind of magical eternity where everything endures in a state of wretchedness.</p><p>With a shock, I noticed others peeking out of rickety shelters that had been hidden by dust and dirt.</p><p>An emaciated and elderly man said, “But this is wonderful! We must put her to work!”</p><p>An older lady shuffled forth. “Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s get rid of her.” </p><p>Yet another old man joined the fray. “Like she could be worse than you lot!”</p><p>In all, seven elderly men and women began accosting me and each other. I could not make sense of what they wanted to accomplish, although it all seemed to involve my mistreatment and degradation.</p><p>“Is there anyone else on the island I can talk to?” I asked.</p><p>There wasn’t.</p><p>I gathered, after listening to their condescending insults and pointless bickering for a while, that these seven had left behind the people of Alpha and had intentionally retreated to this island. Further, they had done so because they considered themselves to be smarter and more driven than the others. In short, they believed that the people of Alpha were profiting unfairly from their brilliance.</p><p>One of them actually asked whether Alpha had collapsed without their leadership and guidance.</p><p>I shrugged.</p><p>They seemed to forget that I was there and began to argue about whose turn it was to repair the lean-tos. One woman complained about her skin burning, although there was definitely not enough sunlight for that to happen. I suggested that since everyone on the island was so smart and driven, they could work together as a team to fix the lean-tos.</p><p>“Creeping socialism!” shouted one woman.</p><p>“My dear,” laughed another man, “My time is precious. It’s just not practical for me to spend it fixing lean-tos.”</p><p>Then a middle-aged man spoke: “Obviously this—whatever—is accustomed to manual labor. We should just make her do it.”</p><p>“But she’s obviously much too lazy and too ignorant!” growled another woman, staring at me malevolently. “I feel dirty just looking at her.” The lady heaved a stone at me which she had been hiding behind her back.</p><p>I dodged it and demanded, “Is that necessary?”</p><p>Suddenly they were all throwing volcanic rocks at me, several of which hit me. They were low density, but still stung. I fled out of the caldera and down the mountain path, hearing angry shouts and footsteps behind me. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, it was turning dark again.</p><p>I glanced back but did not see any of the island’s self-inflated elite pursuing me. I stood on the beach, deflated and bitter, wondering whether it was possible to swim anywhere else but this island. Then I heard breathing. There were people around me that I had not seen in the darkness. Hands seized me and I yelled in anger and surprise, but could not pry myself free. Two feeble lanterns were pointed at me, dispensing a green phosphorous glow.</p><p>A muscular, dark-skinned man pointed out the badge on my shirt to the others and smiled.</p><p>He said, “This is the woman.”</p><p>Squirming and fighting, I was manhandled onto a boat waiting in the calm water and soon the men and I were far from the island. Two rowed, while the other two held me tightly in place. I suppose my desire to escape was obvious.</p><p>“Do you know Sylene?” the Black man asked.</p><p>“Yes,” I replied.</p><p>“We are taking you to her.”</p><p>“Oh,” I said, relaxing a bit.</p><p>The boat was narrow, made out of creased and folded thin metal on a simple structural frame, with an outrigger for stability. It was crude and handmade, yet I was fascinated to find something useful and substantial in this world, something not made of cubes of sod.</p><p>“Where did the materials come from to build this boat?” I asked.</p><p>My captor replied, “From the structure of Alpha itself, from the ocean’s inner retaining wall. The idea originated with Captain Hirata.”</p><p>“Captain?” I asked, surprised to hear of a hierarchical structure in Alpha.</p><p>“I have known our captain, Hirata, since this cycle of time began, perhaps over a thousand years ago. You will understand why people follow Hirata.”</p><p>I gazed at the dark ocean and could find no point of reference whatsoever. I wondered how these people navigated in the pitch black.</p><p>“My name is Zaid,” my captor said.</p><p>I asked, “What language are you speaking?”</p><p>I heard him chuckle.</p><p>“What language are <i>you</i> speaking?” he replied.</p><p>“I asked you first.”</p><p>“I cannot tell you what language I am speaking, just as you cannot tell me what language you are speaking.”</p><p>“But, I’m speaking…,” and just like that the name died on my lips. I failed to say it, after trying repeatedly.</p><p>Zaid said, “This realm removes our differences. Just as it removes our histories and our knowledge. We are left with the addled brain of a drunk.”</p><p>“It goes deeper than knowledge,” I said. “I can understand blocking knowledge and hiding words on a synaptic level. Maybe even instant translation. But there are other things about this place that seem inexplicable. The passage of time, for instance.”</p><p>Zaid nodded knowingly.</p><p>“Time,” he said, “is what first revealed to us the false nature of this world. When Hirata appeared here, he was holding an empty wine bottle in each hand. Perhaps because there was literally nothing else in this world to possess, I thought I had to have those two empty bottles. Hirata said that he would give them to me, but only after I acted as witness to an experiment he was about to conduct. He filled one wine bottle with sand, then placed it above the other bottle to form an hourglass.”</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“What you would expect,” Zaid said. “We saw sand flowing from the top glass to the bottom one and collecting there. After a while, it continued to flow, but didn’t seem to collect. Each saw a different amount of sand. Only when we all turned away and then turned back, would the hourglass be empty. Otherwise, it kept flowing.”</p><p>“But what does that mean?” I asked.</p><p>“We saw the image of a running hourglass, an image of flowing time, and I think that was all it was, just an image of time passing. Time, as the process that allows information to move around and things to happen in a coherent manner, does not exist here. Once you are aware of the lie, it’s impossible to ignore.”</p><p>“Did you take them?” I asked. “The wine bottles?”</p><p>“Hirata keeps them to remind himself that there is another world outside of this one, a world not ruled by invisible gods who we must constantly attempt to please with our actions, a world where people are free. And a world to which, one day, with persistence, all us us shall return. He has promised us this.”</p><p>The oarsman announced then that we had arrived.</p><p>Above us was anchored a surprisingly large ship resting in the water. I became aware of distant voices and saw other ships of various sizes surrounding us, all tall, still and serene in the motionless water.</p><p>I tried to image how this much water could be so still.</p><p>“No wind, no weather, no tide, no rotation,” I thought to myself. This world had to exist somewhere very isolated indeed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Cinque</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We boarded the larger ship by ladder and walked the length of the deck. The decking felt unstable underfoot. I realized everything had been engineered with no rivets and no fasteners. Rows of people, all sitting motionless in meditation, were illuminated weakly by the many phosphorous lanterns lining the ship. We ascended to an elevated deck at the stern. Actually, I could not tell which was “aft” and which was “stern,” as the ship was more of an elongated platform. I peered into the darkness, but saw and heard nothing.</p>
<p>“We were successful,” Zaid reported.</p>
<p>A cover was lifted from a large flaming lantern, and in the light I saw the tall, thin figure of a woman, astonishingly beautiful, dressed in a black silk dress. I heard myself gasp.</p>
<p>She looked me over from head to toe, then approached and shifted her gaze to Zaid. She delivered a gentle caricature of a salute and half smiled. He nodded subtly and shifted his gaze to me.</p>
<p>The woman half circled me, then turned to face me, her penetrating eyes glowing. I wanted to reach out and touch her long hair, which was healthy and unruly and fell onto her shoulders like a blanket.</p>
<p>“Oh,” I said, breathing deeply and desperately, my heart pounding. As though someone had yanked the consciousness from my body, I crumpled and was left staring up into a just-lightening sky.</p>
<p>“Uh oh,” I heard Zaid comment.</p>
<p>The woman in the black dress knelt beside me and placed her hand on my cheek.</p>
<p>“It’s not intentional,” she said. “I promise.”</p>
<p>I realized upon hearing her voice that this was not actually a woman, but a man. I should perhaps have realized by the narrow hips and flat chest, but even knowing this I was still unnerved and awestruck. The beautiful man said, “We’ll let her rest for a little bit. When light returns, we’ll move forward. Zaid, I need you to deliver a message to the other groups. Everything needs to be prepared.”</p>
<p>Still supine, I realized after hearing this authoritative voice who this was.</p>
<p>“You’re Captain Hirata!” I blurted out.</p>
<p>“Mimina Hirata,” he said, smiling. “How do you do?”</p>
<p>  </p>
<p>——————————</p>
<p>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>Hirata, despite the dress-wearing and the gorgeousness, went by ‘he.’ In fact, he wasn’t feminine, just beautiful. I asked him about this.</p>
<p>“All of us were deposited in this place with a shadow, a trace, of our former selves. Yet, the people who arrived wearing eyeglasses found they did not need those glasses to see. The people who arrived with crutches found they did not need them to walk. What this tells me is that we were all physically repaired, but only in the broadest stokes. Scars and birthmarks remained. Personalities remained, if not the experiences that informed them. All I can say for sure if that this is who I am—the name, the personality, the drive to defeat whatever devils run this world. Since I’m happy with who I am, why would I ever give that up?”</p>
<p>“You are wise, Captain,” I agreed. “By the way, where is my friend Sylene?”</p>
<p>“Safe,” he replied.</p>
<p>“But…where is she?”</p>
<p>“Nearby.”</p>
<p>“I want to see her,” I said.</p>
<p>Just then the ship dropped in the water by perhaps a foot. Hirata did not seem surprised. He helped steady me and directed my attention to the distant horizon. There, far above the water, I saw a minuscule flash and a circle of light.</p>
<p>“What just happened?” I asked.</p>
<p>“The Glitterball originates <i>here</i>,” he indicated the air around us, “as energy. It then forms somewhere in the Alpha ring as mass, as a solid, and the passenger shuttle emerges and deposits its passengers. But the process of opening a door starts here, right here. The mechanism, the interface to the other rings, is here. And according to your friend Sylene—” Hirata then turned me around to face him, and again I was struck by the perfect symmetry of his feline face “—you can open that door. Is that true?”</p>
<p>I forced myself to turn away and tried to decipher what exactly was happening here. From the lower deck came sounds of sparring. Men and women were mock fighting with spears fashioned from the same material as the frame of the ship. I peered around: the fleet of ships surrounding us was immense. I realized this was an army, and an organized one.</p>
<p>“I want to see Sylene,” I demanded firmly.</p>
<p>“Do not trust Sylene,” he said, just as firmly.</p>
<p>Hirata raised his hand into the sky and then flashed several hand-sign signals. At once the amount of activity around us increased.</p>
<p>“I don’t trust <i>you</i>,” I stated.</p>
<p>“Sylene offered to help me pass through to Beta once before,” Hirata said. “She said I would have to leave the others behind, all those who I’ve spent many cycles of time organizing, all those who I have vowed to save from this ludicrous world.”</p>
<p>Hirata attempted to take my hand; I backed away from him.</p>
<p>“I won’t help you,” I said.</p>
<p>“How can you say that? You’ve seen this world. How can you say you won’t help all these people? Despite the steady state of misery and defilement in this corner of the universe, I have returned again and again with one goal. And now, you finally appear, a cosmic hiccup. A knife sharp enough to do damage.”</p>
<p>He seemed to falter in his argument. He again took my hand, gently this time, and pulled me over to the edge of the deck.</p>
<p>“Here,” he said, indicating the space before us, which was filled with nothing. “Right here is the door to liberation.” The vessel was still in the water. Before us, under the dull orange-pink haze of sky, was an empty gray expanse.</p>
<p>Again, he flashed several signs with his hands, a signal to those stationed around us.</p>
<p>“When I first arrived in this world, I had two empty bottles of saké, one in each hand.”</p>
<p>“Zaid said they were wine bottles,” I objected.</p>
<p>“My pointed-eared friend…,” he sighed, shaking his head sadly.</p>
<p>“Go on,” I urged.</p>
<p>“I’m sure you are aware by now that there is nothing here to drink that hasn’t become in some way poisonous. Nevertheless, I was born with a thirst, an indomitable thirst. I thought, ‘This is my punishment, a thirst I can never quench.’ I suffered so much that I became a guru of pain in a world of suffering.</p>
<p>“One day I realized that my thirst would never be slaked by drink and that indeed it was not drink that I desired. Rather, I thirsted for the world that was stolen from us, the original world that was taken from all of us. Justice has been measured out so many times that hardly anyone moves between the rings. Justice here is worn out; it has given up. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes over thousands of years. And what I’ve also seen with my own eyes is that justice is hell. We have to break that cycle, break the bonds that tie us to this place. Even if I’m wrong about the world we came from, the bonds have to be broken. There is no future here, just as there is no past. We have to escape. And for that to happen, you must open the door.”</p>
<p>He pulled me close to him, very close. I was uncertain how to react.</p>
<p>“I will see you again,” he said, “in a new country.”</p>
<p>With that he wrapped himself around my body and tilted, causing us to plunge through the air and into the tepid water below.</p>
<p>I held my breath, writhed, and tried to free myself, but he held tight. I could see the pale sky above the water, the crude outline of the hull of the ship. Enveloped in water, wrapped tightly by Hirata’s spidery body, I struggled and fought, but liquid filled my lungs. I suspected that I could not drown, but panic took me nonetheless, and as the light faded and I faced the dark deep I gave in to Hirata’s wish.</p>
<p>“Beta!” I thought, and just like that the Glitterball was all around me, in every direction. The colossal flow swept me and Hirata through. Entwined, we were spat out onto a foreign shore, an orange sky above us. Almost immediately we were hoisted into the air. How did Hirata still have such a tight hold of me? We were suspended upside down and the water drained from inside us. Then, we were lowered to rest on a beach of coarse brown sand.</p>
<p>I vomited up the rest of the foul water from inside me and lie there, staring at Mimina Hirata, who, similarly, was expelling the poison from Alpha.</p>
<p>“You jerk,” I rasped.</p>
<p>Gradually, we sat up in the wet sand and looked around. He had, I noticed, a dark braided rope wrapped tightly around his ankle that extended up to the deck of the ship. There I saw Hirata’s crew smiling at him. It seemed like most of the other boats had come through as well, scattered across the length of shore.</p>
<p>“Where’d you get the rope?” I finally asked.</p>
<p>He lay back, staring at the new sky.</p>
<p>“It’s my hair,” he said. “I just kept cutting it off and braiding it in.” He turned to look at me. “I play the long game.” He removed the rope from his ankle and stood up, looking around distractedly.</p>
<p>There was the calm orange ocean. Opposite the water was a forested landscape dominated by a primitive-looking walled city.</p>
<p>“No sun,” he noted. “Where’s the sun?”</p>
<p>I did not see any sun.</p>
<p>“No wind. No birds.” Anger flashed on his face. “This is Beta. You brought us to Beta! Why didn’t you bring us to Gamma—to the Gamma ring?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t even know there was a Gamma,” I said truthfully.</p>
<p>Hirata’s fists were shaking. He placed them over his eyes and cried out in frustration.</p>
<p>Then Sylene, who apparently had just freed herself, appeared from behind the largest beached ship, running at top speed, soldiers pursuing her.</p>
<p>“Run!” she yelled at me.</p>
<p>I ran, joining her.</p>
<p>Hirata, taken by surprise, watched in frustration as we fled toward the city structures located on higher ground.</p>
<p>“Zaid!” he shouted.</p>
<p>Female troops, wearing dark vests and leathery skirts, streamed from the gates of the walled city, intending to face off against Hirata and his army. As we approached, they cocked and aimed longbows at us in unison.</p>
<p>“We’re the good guys!” Sylene announced. She then pointed toward the spear-carrying soldiers chasing us. “Those are the bad guys!”</p>
<p>The defensive line, which was soldiered by women, allowed us through and redirected their attention to our pursuers.</p>
<p>I heard the whistle of a flying arrow, then a howl of pain, and one of Hirata’s men fell. I expected a battle to ensue, but instead Hirata held up a hand, raising it high above his head.</p>
<p>His followers halted in their tracks. Alone, he approached the wall of women warriors, every one of whom kept their weapon trained on him. He glared at them suspiciously, then without fear he knelt next to the fallen man to examine the shaft of arrow protruding from the man’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Hirata stood and signaled his troops with a different sign and they all turned and walked calmly away. Hirata helped the injured man to his feet, not even glancing back at the wall of soldiers towering beside him.</p>
<p>The arrayed women had been observing this in keen fascination.</p>
<p>“Chief, did you see?” asked a woman with ruddy cheeks.</p>
<p>“Yes,” replied another. “Report to Camilla that their leader is a woman. There may be some accommodation open to us.”</p>
<p>“She’s magnificent!” declared another one breathlessly.</p>
<p>Sylene shook her head, indicating that I should stay silent about Mimina Hirata’s gender.</p>
<p>“We need to buy time,” she whispered in my ear.</p>
<p>We accompanied the women into the city, an enclosed and protected fortress, and the gates shut behind us.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Sei</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the other side of the seaward gate, the road was crowded with troops rushing past us, while a small detachment of women guided us in the opposite direction, toward the city’s center. Upon closer examination, I saw that their distinctive garments were not leather at all, but some kind of unbleached thick papery material.</p>
<p>I examined the multistory structures lining the road.</p>
<p>“Everything is made of wood,” I observed.</p>
<p>“There are lots of trees in Beta, and enough light and rain to make them grow. They even replace themselves after they are felled, although it takes a long cycle or two. As you can see, this civilization is built of wood.”</p>
<p>“Why are there trees in Beta but not in Alpha?” I asked.</p>
<p>The commander leading the way, whose name was “Nur,” was muscular, with unruly frizzy hair, caramel skin, and strong features. She was almost the opposite of my anemic and freckled, straight-haired self, and I was jealous. The people here came in every shape, every skin color, with no rhyme or reason. I wondered if this was purposeful, or just a side effect of constant “promotion” and “demotion” between the realms.</p>
<p>Nur said, “Until we have a handle on this situation, we are going to place you both in the central tower. We can keep an eye on you there. It’s the best defended position in the city.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said Sylene.</p>
<p>“You can thank me by explaining why those people outside the city want to capture you.”</p>
<p>“Ah,” began Sylene, “their leader, whose name is Mimina Hirata, believes that my friend here came from a world outside of this universe. Hirata wants access to that other universe.”</p>
<p>Sylene, I believed, was accompanying me for precisely the same reason, but she did not mention that.</p>
<p>“Hirata is the woman in the black dress?” asked Nur.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I confirmed.</p>
<p>“She is fearless and beautiful,” noted Nur. “Do you think Mimina Hirata would attack our city in order to steal you away?”</p>
<p>Sylene considered. “You saw when the soldier was injured. War is not what she is about. On the other hand, as long as she holds this city hostage, the two of us can’t leave.”</p>
<p>We were guided toward the center of the city, past standing guards and through heavy doors, until finally we ascended a steep flight of winding stairs. The commander left us locked inside the upper room, a dim, square chamber. Together we pulled down the heavy armored shutters so we could observe the city through the barred windows. Torch-bearers were lighting the lamps that lined the roads through the city.</p>
<p>“So, no men,” I said.</p>
<p>“No men,” agreed Sylene. “This society was established by women who cut up men.”</p>
<p>“They cut up men?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I guess they decided that men are not worth having around.”</p>
<p>“No men,” I repeated.</p>
<p>Sylene shifted her gaze to my face, expecting yet another ignorant question to emerge from my mouth, I was certain.</p>
<p>“What about procreation?” I asked feebly.</p>
<p>She burst into laughter. “Procreation?” she mimicked me. “Have you seen any children since you got here?”</p>
<p>“No,” I said.</p>
<p>“There aren’t any.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>The city became dark and silent. Soldiers patrolled the road and alleyways with torches held high. For the first time since we met, Sylene seemed relaxed.</p>
<p>“Thank you for looking out after me,” I said.</p>
<p>Sylene shifted her gaze away, then began to speak dreamily: “I want to love you and protect you.”</p>
<p>I was a bit stunned by this. “I’m pretty sure I’m twice as old as you are.”</p>
<p>“I’m four thousand years old,” she said. “How old are you again?”</p>
<p>“You win,” I succumbed, and rested my head on her shoulder.</p>
<p>“All right,” Sylene announced. “A primer. Are you ready?”</p>
<p>I didn’t know what she meant, but nodded anyway.</p>
<p>She said, “This universe has three rings: Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. People are sent to Alpha for deprivation. If they are good, they are promoted to Beta. From Beta they can be promoted up to Gamma as an additional reward, or be demoted back down again to Alpha for further deprivation. Alpha is a world defined by a lack of life, yet most of the souls here live in Alpha. In Beta, they have some nicer things. But you’re still not allowed to live—to really live—as a human. That is constrained to residence in Gamma. But even then, you can’t die or age. And I’m not convinced there are many souls in Gamma at this point. I think this universe has expended its resources.”</p>
<p>I considered this.</p>
<p>“Who decides?” I asked. “I mean, who judges whether you are to move up or down?”</p>
<p>Sylene answered, “This place operates according to simple rules. Kindness moves you up, and violence moves you down,” she said.</p>
<p>“But <i>who decides</i>?” I asked again. “I mean, sometimes a person is morally impelled to violence. And other times not acting can lead to evil. Who decides?”</p>
<p>“The rules are simple,” she said. “They don’t require any thought or judgement.”</p>
<p>“But—”</p>
<p>“Look,” she interrupted, “would you rather have someone rummaging around in your head trying to determine whether your motivations are pure, or would you rather have your actions speak for themselves?”</p>
<p>“Well, when you present it that way….”</p>
<p>At the distant city gate, a small group of people with torches were tracing the same path that we had taken to the central tower. Two lines of guards were approaching. Between them were half a dozen of Hirata’s followers, all women. Leading them was Hirata himself, unmistakable even at a distance in his long black dress, with silver brocade shimmering in the torchlight.</p>
<p>Hirata paused, mid-stride, and raised his eyes to the tower that contained us. With a shock I realized he could see my face through the barred window and pulled back. He continued to stare at me.</p>
<p>“Look at that. He waited a thousand years for you to arrive,” observed Sylene. “He’ll never give you up.”</p>
<p>I started to cry. I could feel Hirata’s eyes on me as I turned from the window.</p>
<p>“Why is he inside the gates?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I’m sure he’s going to meet with their leader, Camilla. When she realizes he’s not a woman, there’s going to be a blood bath.”</p>
<p>“But he won’t die?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Of course not, but they’ll cut him up and burn the pieces.”</p>
<p>“What happens then? I mean, if a person can’t die, but the body is destroyed…”</p>
<p>“His essence,” explained Sylene, “will exist in a diffuse state, unable to act.”</p>
<p>I covered my face mournfully.</p>
<p>Sylene asked with curiosity, “How did Mimina Hirata affect you the first time you met him?”</p>
<p>I remembered feeling frozen and breathless, then collapsing and remaining almost paralyzed.</p>
<p>“I was overwhelmed,” I said truthfully. “I would have fainted if lack of consciousness were an option here. I thought he was so beautiful.”</p>
<p>She nodded. “I felt the same way. But he’s just a man. Is he…so beautiful?”</p>
<p>I wondered why she asked that; she had met him herself.</p>
<p>She added, “Think about it…is he really more beautiful than anyone in this world? Or is it a kind of deceit that allows him to wear a dress and overpower people like us?”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what I mean,” Sylene acknowledged. “I thought I understood this world. And he came from this world. Yet, he obviously has some kind of special power. It’s almost as if…the world created him to fulfill its purpose…as a kind of magical force. But if Hirata is done away with, his followers will disperse and eventually we can go peacefully on our way too. It’d be a shame for such a beautiful man to get cut up.”</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Sette</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a bleak world named Alpha, the Vulcan woman Sovak T’Lon awakens without her memory. Her mysterious guide, Sylene, tries to protect her from the beautiful messiah Hirata and his pirates. She escapes to Beta, where a warrior named Camilla reigns over a society for cutting up men. And then there is the Glitterball, a portal between realms that apparently only she can open, although she doesn’t know how. Will she make it to Gamma? And what lies beyond?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>We waited.</p><p>Light returned to the sky, and from outside the locked door we heard fast steps in the stairwell. The lock bar slid aside and Nur, the muscular, frizzy-haired guard, burst in and stared at us.</p><p>“Well?” asked Sylene.</p><p>“Camilla is handing you both over to Mimina Hirata,” said Nur, breathing heavily. “I don’t understand how we can hand women over to men. But that is what’s happening.”</p><p>“Hirata got to Camilla” said Sylene. “I did not expect that.”</p><p>Outraged, I asked Nur, “So you’re not going to help us? You’re not going to protect us after all?”</p><p>Nur shrugged, “We women are the violent, the selfish, the nasty, and the proud. This is our city, after all.” Then she added, “But you’re not part of it. For Camilla, it was easier to hand you over.”</p><p><br/>
</p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Hirata cast a suspicious eye at Sylene, then approached me and gave me a half-smile.</p><p>“Hello again,” he said. For whatever reason, he looked haggard and less appealing than before. Although he was tall, he was also slight of build, spidery almost. Perhaps his tipping me into the ocean had soured my perception of him.</p><p>He continued, “I want a chance to properly explain myself. Let me—” he grabbed my arm “—explain myself.”</p><p>I was too tired to pull away. This land—this universe—was exhausting. How did these people remain sane for the centuries of time they claimed to have spent in these empty places? I stared at him with disdain, but I also felt pity. How had I come to be the crystallization of his hopes and plans for breaking free from this universe of ridiculousness and pain?</p><p>“I’ll let you know,” I replied, removing his hand from my arm.</p><p>He kept staring at me, as if to measure the strength of my will. I moved physically closer to Sylene.</p><p>Hirata then addressed another woman entirely: “Camilla, let us see this underworld you described.”</p><p>It was unclear whether Hirata had convinced Camilla, the city’s leader, of the importance of his mission to find a way to leave this universe, or if she had simply decided to hand us over based on his determination. But the concept of life outside the three rings had inspired Camilla to reveal to Hirata a peculiar trait of the city around us: it was built over a portal that led to a secret world beneath us that was devoid of people.</p><p>This had piqued Hirata’s interest.</p><p>Sylene also seemed determined to see the hidden realm for herself.</p><p>The tunnel, which dated from a time just after the city flipped from andrarchy to gynarchy, extended downward at an angle from a large subbasement. Camilla hypothesized that the men imprisoned in that space had tried to engineer an escape, and had discovered the underworld by accident. We traveled downward in single file, first Camilla and her guards, then Hirata and his followers, and finally me, Nur, and Sylene. Horizontal logs above us rested on wooden supports to form the lengthy structure. The steeply angled descent beneath the city leveled suddenly and the floor became smooth and hard like cement. I reached down and touched the dense substance.</p><p>“What is this stuff?” I asked.</p><p>“Bedrock,” answered Nur.</p><p>The smooth, level nature of the material led me to doubt that it was “natural” rock. We entered a tall, buttressed alcove. Camilla’s soldiers began to remove planks from the floor, while we stood aside holding the torches. A large square opening was revealed.</p><p>Sylene traced the straight, clean edge around the opening with her hands.</p><p>“This is structural,” she remarked to Hirata, who was kneeling close beside her. “Like the elements you used to build your fleet of ships. This is part of the bottle that contains us and keeps us here.”</p><p>Several torches were thrown down, through the opening, and I could see a platform below covered with some debris. Camilla, Hirata, Sylene, and I descended by ladder.</p><p>“Stay away from the edge,” Camilla warned.</p><p> The quiet around us was unnerving. As more torches were handed down, our new environment started to become visible: a vast underground counterpart to the world above, with water filling the expanse. Columns emerged from the sea far below, reaching skyward to meet the vaulted roof. The platform on which we were standing, which extended indefinitely in either direction, was part of a skeletal frame that traversed the entire chamber.</p><p>“We’ve done a fair amount of exploration down here,” said Camilla. “When it rains, this chamber fills with water. Then the water level lowers and it rains again. It just so happens that our city was built over one of the drainage ports.”</p><p> We all stood peering into the expansive darkness. Sylene looked a little sad and disenchanted. Hirata gazed intently at the structure, perhaps trying to make sense of the technology or architecture. Camilla was unreadable, but I wonder if she wasn’t contemplating what Hirata had told her earlier during their earlier. Hirata had a way of haunting your mind and thoughts.</p><p>“There is something else, too,” said Camilla. “You go down far enough, near the water, and you stop understanding the languages of other people.”</p><p>“No translation?” I suggested.</p><p>“That’s right,” she agreed.</p><p>Hirata stepped back and announced, “This is a water recycling mechanism. It’s a large and impressive piece of engineering, but really not that interesting.”</p><p>“I agree,” Sylene nodded solemnly.</p><p>“Are you two insane?” I could not believe that Sylene and Hirata were brushing off this underground realm as insignificant. I raved, “This is a universe where people do not die, they just continue sputtering near the point of death. There is sunlight in the world above to make the trees grow, but no sun! There is a magic train that carries people between the rings, for logic’s sake! Why does this place need a water recycling system? Why not make the water magically appear in the air, and then magically disappear after it soaks into the ground? Why not make the trees grow without water just like they grow without the sun? You people have been inside this—this <i>machine</i> so long that you—you….”</p><p>In the torch light, I could see their faces were both amused and a bit fascinated by my outburst.</p><p>“Oh come on,” I said, indicating the vast structure around us. “This is significant. I mean, why is time treated symbolically here, while this water is treated as a real, actual substance?” I pointed to the calm water far below. “Can you drink this water?” I asked.</p><p>Camilla said, “Not at all.”</p><p>“I’m not convinced the stuff you guys call ‘water’ is even really water. It just seems to be an unfriendly stand-in for water, a place holder. I mean, why go to all this trouble?”</p><p>“You can drink the water in Gamma,” noted Nur, a little sadly. “You can eat the fruit, sleep, even maybe die.”</p><p>The others nodded in agreement.</p><p>“You’ve all been to Gamma?” I asked.</p><p>“I’ve never been to Gamma,” explained Hirata. “Too much of a troublemaker. I wouldn’t belong there anyway.”</p><p>Camilla nodded sympathetically, saying, “Absolutely, I could never be happy in Gamma. As bad as Beta is, Gamma would be worse.”</p><p>“How?” I asked, incredulous.</p><p>Hirata struggled to form a response, then said, “Somehow the ultimate misery is to be miserable in paradise. I believe that when we discover the path to leave this universe, we will then be either miserable or happy based on what is inside us, and not because of the devices of some flawed god.”</p><p>Sylene’s eyes gleamed in the torchlight.</p><p>I asked her, “What’s beyond Gamma?”</p><p>“That is why you’re here,” she replied. “An outsider…who answered our cry for help. You beamed into our world with the intention of saving us, because we cannot save ourselves.”</p><p>I realized it was time to confront Sylene.</p><p>“<i>You</i> called me to this world, didn’t you?” I asked. “<i>You</i> sent a signal…and that’s why I’m here.”</p><p>“None of us can change our fate,” whispered Sylene.</p><p>“I understand,” I said. “So what’s beyond Gamma?”</p><p>Hirata turned to me, trying to parse the interplay between Sylene and myself.</p><p>He said, “The Glitterball is the key. It is said that the gods who formed this ringed world, the so-called Engineers, used the Glitterball to travel between realms, then to leap beyond them. If you can pass through the Glitterball, you can tell us what is beyond Gamma, and possibly free us from our prison.”</p><p>“The Glitterball…,” I repeated, and made a sweeping gesture while simultaneously imagining a place that did not exist in this world: the place from which I came.</p><p>Before us formed an ovoid, churning Glitterball, high above the water, but within arm’s  reach; a doorway to a place not outside this world, but also not inside it. I took Hirata’s hand in my left, and Sylene’s in my right, and together we three stepped through.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Emerging on the other side, at once my knowledge and memory returned. Hirata and I stood in a very large, circular chamber, filled with level after level of computer processing units, stretching far above us, all active and humming with power and light.</p><p>“I remember,” he said, turning to me. “Gods, I remember! This is a colony ship, with its population housed inter-dimensionally.” He peered about and asked, “Sylene…what happened to Sylene?”</p><p>“I think…Sylene is the avatar of the colony ship,” I suggested. “She sent the signal that brought me here. It was her voice in the distress call. When I beamed over to instantiate Federation relations, I simply did not realize what I was getting into. We suspected there were serious problems…that perhaps this ship was off-course and losing power.”</p><p>Hirata nodded.</p><p>“It explains everything,” he said. “Everything is clear now. It’s like…I awoke from a long and terrible dream. The ship was keeping its passengers alive through austerity and time manipulation. Literally time was so stretched out there was no time to think or remember. And of course we were surviving without resources because we really weren’t surviving, we were in a long, slow process of dying.”</p><p>“Hirata,” I said, “the Federation is here to help. It’s what we do. Will you be a spokesperson for your people? They’ll need a point man for talking to the Federation.”</p><p>“Of course,” he nodded happily.</p><p>“Come with me back to my ship. We have a lot of work to do. We have to contact the Federation so we can fix this ship and find everyone here a new home.”</p><p>“Thank you. I…don’t even know your name,” he said hesitantly.</p><p>“I am Captain Sovak T’Lon, of the Federation Starship Churchill. The Federation is a group of worlds who have agreed to help each other in cooperation, and to help others when we can. I, for example, am from a planet named Vulcan. And, oh, one more thing….”</p><p>I kissed him gently on the lips.</p><p>He looked at me quizzically.</p><p>I admitted, “I know that was unprofessional as well as unbecoming of me as a Starfleet officer, but…you are the most beautiful man I have ever met.”</p><p><br/>
</p><p>——————————</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Hirata’s people successfully settled on a lovely Earth-like planetoid orbiting 83 Leonis Bb, and they still live there today. Every few years, I visited Mimina Hirata, just to say hello. He stopped wearing dresses later on, but I can report that he still caused my heart to pound every time I met him…even outside of the closed-off dreamworld environment created by the inter-dimensional colony ship for its passengers.</p><p>Also, sometimes I sit and remember how attractive and overpowering Sylene seemed to me. I only ever saw her during that time when I was lost inside the giant machinery that was keeping all those people just barely alive.</p><p>I wish I could meet her again as well, in the flesh, but of course she was just a shadow, a ghost of that ship’s AI. Even though not programmed to do so, she was so desperate to save her precious humanoid passengers that she reached out to me as one captain to another.</p><p>Meeting new peoples, exploring new worlds…good times. And this is what makes me the most proud to be a retired Federation starship captain: the memories of the times I was able to help people and make a difference. Even if, as on Alpha and Beta, I couldn’t remember my own name when I was doing it!</p>
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